WAR CRIMES TRIALS KATYN:
How the Soviets Manufactured War Crime Documents for the Nuremberg Court
Translator's note: The following is a typical example of Nuremberg "evidence". The "testimony" consists of "written statements" said to have been signed by "eyewitnesses", but which are simply "quoted" in a "report" written by the Stalinists and read aloud (in excerpt form) by the Soviet prosecutor. The "statements" are not attached to the report, the "witnesses" do not appear in court, and the "original documents" are not attached.
The Soviets were assigned by the Nuremberg Tribunal with the task of introducing all the evidence of German atrocities in Eastern Europe. Nearly all Nuremberg evidence is of similar quality, if not worse.
The "forensic report" quoted in this "report" was the ONLY forensic report ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg.
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Parts of this document have an air of very great realism, even though it is known to be false from beginning to end: the Soviets admitted their guilt for the Katyn shootings in November 1989. The report describes how perjured statements are obtained using procedures which are identical to those of the witchcraft trials of the Middle Ages. This is why civilised countries have rules against oral and written hearsay and prior consistent statements (i.e., the multiplication of "evidence" by repeating the same thing 10 times), and a requirement that cross examination be permitted in some form.
Personally, I consider this document by far the most important document ever introduced into evidence at Nuremberg, and possibly in any other war crimes trial as well.
Note the constant references to totally irrelevant factual material (such as the title and author of a science book possessed by one of the Russian "witnesses") just as if they were really proof of something.
As far as I know, this report has never before been translated and published in its entirety in English. I defy anyone to read this, and then believe any of the other Soviet "evidence" presented at Nuremberg. A glance at the footnotes and references in practically any work of Holocaust literature (for example, Pressac or Raul Hilberg) will show that probably 80% of the "evidence" consists of pure Communist propaganda.
SOVIET PROPAGANDA REPORT STARTS HERE
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DOCUMENT 054 USSR
Report by a Special Soviet Commission, 24 January 1944, concerning the shooting of Polish officer prisoners of war in the forest of Katyn. The executions had been carried out in autumn 1941 by the German "Staff of the Construction Battalion 537". In spring 1943 the Germans, by blackmailing witnesses into giving false evidence and by other means, had tried to make it appear that the Soviet NKWD was responsible for the shooting of the 11,000 victims.
[..]
Conclusions
From the totality of material available to the Special Commission, particularly from
the testimonies of the 100 witnesses interrogated by the Commission, the facts of the case as examined by the forensic experts, and the documents and valuables taken from the graves in the Katyn forest, the following conclusions may be drawn with irrefutable clarity:
1. The Polish prisoners of war in the three camps west of Smolensk were housed there until the beginning of the war, were engaged in road construction work, and remained there even after the invasion of Smolensk by the German conqueror, until September 1943.
2. In the autumn of 1941, mass shootings of Polish prisoners of war taken from the above mentioned camps were carried out by the German occupying power in the Katyn forest.
3. The mass shootings of the Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn forest was carried out by the German armed forces under the cover name "Staff 537 of the Construction Battalion",
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b) the German occupation authorities, in the spring of 1943, transported the corpses of Polish prisoners of war from other locations and shot by them at other sites, and laid them in the excavated graves of the Katyn forest in
an attempt to wipe away the traces of their own bestiality and to increase the number of the "victims of Bolshevism" in the Katyn forest;
c) while the German occupation authorities spread their provocation,
they used approximately 500 Russian prisoners of war for the job of excavating the graves at Katyn in order to remove all documents and exhibits which might prove German authorship of the crime. The Russian prisoners of war were shot immediately after termination of this work.
